Bye bye, kmuki.com!

Recently I posted about my frustration at having discovered that my blog address, www.kmuki.com, was no longer pointing to my blog, but to some bizarre word press thing.  Well, I did a bit of digging to try to find out how I could my domain back, and boy, it gets interesting.

First thing I did was hunt through google apps website - to no avail - to try to find where I could pay for the thing.  Nope, no luck there.  Did a google search on how to renew the subscription - but you can't do that if its not showing in your account settings anyway.  So no dice there.

But I did find a link that told me that the address was now owned by a company called enom.  So, as I couldn't find any way of contacting google for help - there's no email addresses there to contact anyone - I tried then contacting enom.  Who promptly wrote back with the godaddy.com search that I had found before, telling me that my domain, kmuki.com, is now owned by a Patrick Edwards, of Parker, Colorado.  No business name but I have gleaned, from his email address, that he's probably a chartered accountant or something - he has CPA in his email address.

I wrote to Mr Edwards and basically asked him if he was a business that bought / sold domains, or whether he was a private company that just happened to buy this one.  I explained how it had been my blog address and the situation behind how it came to expire.  And the blighter didn't answer my questions, but wrote back saying he'd sell it to me, for the right price.

So, I wrote back again - again asking what sort of company he was, and asking what he'd paid for it, what currency etc.  The prick wrote back wanting $400 USD for it - for a free domain that cost $15/year to maintain (and would still cost $15 / year or so even if I bought it back) - now honestly, as if I'm going to pay $400 for a more personal blog address on a blog I rarely use (although I've posted 3 posts or so in the last few days).  Get stuffed.

So alas, kmuki.com has gone.  But I'm being a bit sneaky - I can have kmuki.net if I want - $9 - and I can 'backorder' kmuki.com when it becomes available again.  So look out Mr Patrick Greedy Edwards - kmuki.com might just be back with its rightful owner sooner than you think!